Hello, after updating to TM 2026.1 and datasmith exporter to 5.7.4, and while trying to check wether 0 thickness geometry such as wall-layer with 0 thickness can actually work, I realized that VA and twinmotion do not collaborate well at all. In previous version at least we could overcome the problems. Now wall heights are not synchronizing at all, dublicate geometries appear in twinmotion etc. I really believe that VA and twinmotion should have a good connection bridge. Does anybody have any suggestion on other real-time renderers that work well with VA?
I don’t have experience with Visual Arq, but I’ve found the live datasmith linking in Revit to be problematic. Often I’ll export a datasmith file to disk, and manually reimport into Twinmotion. Or sometimes save to a different file format, like FBX.
I had tested D5, and it works better than TM, I agree. But I believe that D5 and TM play in different logic of licencing. TM is free for professional use, if someone works under a certain amount of income when D5 has a free version, which if I remember right, is kind of freemium, where you have the free version with specific features, unless you unlock the paid version.
TM with the path trace engine, is very advanced in terms of realism etc.
I believe the target of VA dev in rendering should be either TM for free use or Enscape for paid real time renderer.
FBX kind of solves some of the problems I think, i’ve not tested it all the way, but live link is the way to go unless someone only has to render the scene, not to apply material, test & match etc.
VA objects mapping is not even constintent with Rhino’s Cycles renderer. In the viewports, left a realistic mode and right a raytraced one. I believe if dev focuses in the rhino’s cycles renderer - which is powerfull but not realtime - a window opens for TM or other real time renderer’s compatibility, because of similar render architecture. Am I wrong on this technically @fsalla ?
Another thing that’s not working with external real time renderers, is the levels and sections manager of VA. It seems it’s not working for the Rhino internal rendering tools also. Both viewports have a level section applied. So again, if someone fixes this, compatibility will apply on external tools also.
Yea we used to use Enscape but after Chaos bought them they seemed to focus so much on Revit and Sketchup that major bugs for Rhino never got fixed, while the price continued to climb.
The path tracing in TM is great, as are the tons and tons of user created objects via sketchfab. But D5 is a much smoother process to use as a real time walkthrough rather than a standalone rendering software. The sync is really smooth.
